Katherine Hall Page, The Body in the Snowdrift

Katherine Hall Page, The Body in the Snowdrift - Caterer Faith Fairchild is not looking forward to all the Fairchilds getting together at Pine Slopes, a Vermont ski resort. Her husband's family threatens to emotionally overwhelm her and on her first day at the resort she finds the body of local lawyer Boyd Harrison who invested quite a sum of money in Pine Slopes.

Everyone thinks he had a heart attack since Boyd felt chest pains and reached into his pocket for his medicine. However, someone substituted the nitroglycerin with mints. Shortly after his death, the head chef John Forester disappears without giving anyone advance notice. Faith thinks it is strange because he has been at the resort for years and loved his job. Malicious pranks like a lifelike blow up doll painted in red to look like blood floating in the pool and the sabotage of the ski lift convince Faith someone wants to bankrupt the resort. When John's body is splattered all over the mountain because someone pushed him into the snow making machine, Faith investigates only to walk into a trap set by the killer.

Though the fifteenth Faith Fairchild mystery, the series retains the freshness and originality of the very first book which won the Agatha Award. The heroine is drawn into the Fairchilds' problems, getting into arguments with her sister-in-laws and trying to keep her nieces and nephews safe and happy in spite of their mother's obsessive compulsion need to regiment their lives. There are many people who could have killed the victims but Faith has to find a motive compelling enough for someone to eliminate the chef and the investor. Katherine Hall Page has written an exciting, down-to-earth, amateur sleuth mystery.

Morrow, May 205, $23.95, 256 pp.

ISBN: 0060525304

Harriet Klausner